Creating a Landscape Plan

Think of your landscape plan as a tool to help you get a handle on the price tag of your project, establish your priorities, and make sure that all the separate parts of your landscape — the barbecue pit, a pond, the kid's area — are present and accounted for. Transferring dreams to paper requires more than a little imagination, but with some practice on perspective, you can tell if your plan is aesthetically pleasing.

Draw the base plan

Before you can start adding your wonderful new landscape features, you have to map what's already there. Taking measurements may sound like a pain in the neck, but you're far ahead of the game when you get estimates for what this new design is actually going to cost. Without measurements, you'll have no idea how much concrete, wood chips, topsoil, bricks, groundcover, plants, or other material that you need. Measurements are also vital when adding new elements to your yard. Sure, you can eyeball your yard and make your drawing fit, but when you try to execute the plan, you may find out how fallible your eyeballs really are. Measurements eliminate guesswork and give you the confidence of knowing that your plan will work.

Invest in a 100-foot tape measure to avoid the frustration of marking off 12-foot lengths and adding them up to get a reading on your 400-foot side boundary. Enlist a helper when you're ready to measure, to make the job go quicker.

If you have the original map of your property, skip the measuring and trace that. No need to reinvent the wheel.

Now get your base plan measured:

1. Measure the lengths of all edges of your property and draw the outline of your yard on paper.

2. Measure and draw in the outline of your house.

Be sure to place the house exactly where it sits on your lot.

3. Measure and add the garage, tool shed, greenhouse, yard barn, outhouse, chicken coop, or whatever other outbuildings currently exist.

4. Measure and draw in whatever paving is already in place and that you want to keep — the driveway, front walk, basketball court, and so on.

Don't assume that right angles and parallel lines that are formed by walls, fences, driveways, and property lines are always perfect. Verify the distance between objects with as many measurements as you can.

5. Measure and draw existing fences, big trees, hedges, perennials, vegetable garden, and any other current features you want to keep right where they are.

Indicate the precise location of a tree trunk or plant by measuring the distance from it to two known points, such as two corners of the house.

Now trot down to your local copy shop and run off a half-dozen or so copies.

Dream on paper

Transfer your dreams into a plan: Place a sheet of tracing paper over your base plan. Think about the elements you'd like to add to your yard, and circular or oval balloons or goose eggs on the tracing paper. Write inside the circles what they are ("shed," "play area," "vegetable garden" — you get the idea). Make the balloons about the same proportional size that they are in real life. Draw a big balloon for the mini basketball court, say, versus a small balloon for the herb garden — or vice versa depending on your priorities.

Here's what to add to your base plan:

• Activity areas. Add goose eggs for all the special activities that you eventually want to enjoy in your yard: kids' play area, meditation corner, outdoor kitchen/dining, and so on.

• Paths. Draw any paths that you'd like to add, using lines to indicate their shapes and widths.

• Hardscape. Sketch in fences, a spa, a patio, a deck, front porch improvements, and any other hardscape elements you've chosen.

• Plants. Add goose eggs for flowerbeds, shrubs, vines, new trees, vegetable gardens, and so on.

After you have all of the parts of your new design in place, you should have something that looks like Figure 1.

Test the design

When you're satisfied with your paper sketch, you need to test your design. Gather a bunch of sizable objects which will act as stand-ins for your garden elements: garden hoses and rope, tomato cages, lawn chairs and plastic buckets, a wheelbarrow load of leaves or a bale of straw. Work on one section of the plan at a time:

• Outline curving paths with hose or rope, or sprinkle a path of oatmeal or flour so that you can see the direction it takes.

To make a straight line, invest in a chalkline, a device that looks like a tape measure, but is filled with chalk. The chalk powders a string that you pull out. Tie the chalked string between two upright stakes, and clip the end. Lift the taut string in the center with your thumb and forefinger and let it ping hard toward the ground. It snaps against the grass or soil, leaving a perfect straight edge. Use the chalkline to mark potential beds and paths when you're drawing your design, then use it again later when you start digging.

• Put lawn chairs where you plan to add shrubs or young trees.

• Pound in tomato cages to show the future homes of roses or large perennials in your flowerbeds.

• Rake the leaves or straw into the outlines of your new beds. If you have a bounty of fall leaves, grass clippings, or straw, you can spread them out to fill in the outlines so you can easily get a feel for your new beds.

• A stepladder makes a good stand-in for an arbor.

Move around any of the parts of your portable garden until you like the way it looks. When you have this part of your yard arranged to your satisfaction, mark your rough plan with revised lines to show bed edges, plant placement, and any other niceties that you want to note. Then move on to the next section of yard and do it again. Repeat until you finish your landscape plan.

Create a final plan

After you're comfortable with each section of your proposed landscape, transfer your ideas to paper in real form — not just goose eggs. Your final plan should include the following:

• Hardscape: Be sure to include deck, patio, benches, fences and gates, paths, spa, tool shed, arbor, and so on.

• Plantings: Add flowerbeds, vegetable gardens, trees, shrubs, vines, lawns, and groundcover.

• Dimensions: Add dimensions for the house, for each element, and for the entire yard.

While the example in Figure 2 may look a little more professional than your drawing, it gives you an idea of what to shoot for.

Keep in mind that some hardscape features may require construction drawings. For more complex projects (decks, big arbors, and the like), you probably want to have these professionally drawn so you can get construction bids, obtain permits, and order materials.